A blog for mothers

Monthly Archives: November 2014

I am a strong believer in the importance of a knowing your midwife well before you give birth so that you feel safe with her. For this reason, I have decided to share my pregnancy experiences with you all. After all, what better way to discuss my attitudes towards pregnancy than by seeing how I myself behave during pregnancy? That being said, these records of my actions should not be construed as recommendations for care. Pregnancy brain may take me over from time to time.

This is my fourth pregnancy. If you add my stepchildren into the count, that makes for a total of 6 children, a husband, a dog, two hermit crabs, and three unhappy looking plants residing in our house. Thus far everyone is surviving, but some days it’s a near thing. I will be perfectly honest and tell you that this pregnancy was not 100% planned. Sort of an embarrassing admission from someone in my line of work, but there it is. Sometimes even midwives get bored of paying attention to their menstrual cycles. . . . We are all excited about the baby now, but it took me some time to get used to the idea. I lost 20 pounds over the summer, for crying out loud, and now I’m back in maternity clothes!

We have always chosen not to find out the gender of our babies while I am pregnant, so in lieu of a permanent name, we give nicknames. Thus far we’ve had Umbert the Unborn, Cletus the Fetus, and Zoe the Zygote. This baby has been christened Bob the Blastocyst for the duration of the pregnancy, so henceforth in this diary I will refer to him or her as Baby Bob.

I am currently 21 weeks pregnant. More than halfway done! Baby Bob is kicking up a storm. He is also starting to develop teeth, grow hair, and make poop out of the amniotic fluid that he is swallowing (ugh). He (or she) can also hear and respond to noises from the outside. My 5-year-old daughter Sophie likes to snuggle next to my belly and make up lullabies for the baby. I like to think that Baby Bob is more active when Sophie does this, but that could just be my imagination. If you want to check out what your baby is doing during each week of your pregnancy, WebMD has a nice site for that. You can find it here: http://www.webmd.com/baby/interactive-pregnancy-tool-fetal-development

If you were to have a prenatal visit with me at 21 weeks of pregnancy, we would talk about a few things related to how far along you are in your pregnancy. At this stage, baby has finished forming most of its major body parts, and is gearing up to grow during the second half of the pregnancy. He or she will need lots of proteins and other nutrients to grow, and we want you to have everything that you need, as well. So we will talk about how many servings of meat, dairy, fish, nuts, and beans you are getting every day, and also if you’re managing to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. I will take a look at your weight gain thus far: depending on how much you weighed before you got pregnant, I would expect you to have gained between 5 and 10 pounds so far (don’t ask me how much I’ve gained, because I won’t tell you). But heading into the second half, you can expect to gain ½ a pound to a pound every week. I am not, however, the weight gain police; I am more concerned about your food choices and activity level than I am about a particular number on a scale.